A group of leading constitutional and legal scholars has endorsed a letter to leaders of Congress, (drafted by my colleague Neil Kinkopf) reminding them of their extensive powers over the conduct of the Iraq war. The diverse group includes Bruce Ackerman (Yale), Ronald Dworkin (NYU and UCL), Richard Epstein (Chicago), and--in spirit at least--James Madison, who long ago wrote:

the constitution
supposes what the History of all Gov[ernments] demonstrates, that the
Ex[ecutive] is the branch of power most interested in war, & most prone to
it. It has accordingly with studied
care, vested the question of war in the Legisl[ative branch].

Meanwhile, Sir Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions in the UK, eloquently dismisses the notion that there is a "war on terror" in progress, according to the Guardian (Jan. 24):

[Sir Ken] acknowledged that the country faced a different and more dangerous
threat than in the days of IRA terrorism and that it had "all the
disturbing elements of a death cult psychology".

But
he said: "It is critical that we understand that this new form of
terrorism carries another more subtle, perhaps equally pernicious,
risk. Because it might encourage a fear-driven and inappropriate
response. By that I mean it can tempt us to abandon our values. I think
it important to understand that this is one of its primary purposes."

Sir
Ken pointed to the rhetoric around the "war on terror" - which has been
adopted by Tony Blair and ministers after being coined by George Bush -
to illustrate the risks.

He said: "London is not a battlefield.
Those innocents who were murdered on July 7 2005 were not victims of
war. And the men who killed them were not, as in their vanity they
claimed on their ludicrous videos, 'soldiers'. They were deluded,
narcissistic inadequates. They were criminals. They were fantasists. We
need to be very clear about this. On the streets of London, there is no
such thing as a 'war on terror', just as there can be no such thing as
a 'war on drugs'.

"The fight against terrorism on the streets of
Britain is not a war. It is the prevention of crime, the enforcement of
our laws and the winning of justice for those damaged by their
infringement."

It is worth emphasizing that the Bush-Blair posture breaches two lines: the line between fighting war and fighting crime, and the line between executive and legislative power to decide whom and how to fight, and over what.